Think of the worst event you've ever been to, a school fete or fundraising gala perhaps. Multiply it by 10 and add in a charge to enter (!) and you've got the Whangerai Craft Fair. From 'easy-iron' ironing boards to a bloke selling seeds (these are edible apparently, you don't plant them like normal people and wait for (tastier) things to grow) it was all truly awful. The only saving grace was a stall selling chutneys and the like - they had some fantastic lemon curd. Although for the entrance fee and curd price combined I could have shipped some from Mars. The only even vaguely funny moment was when the seed man asked to his enthralled audience (the old women and one small child) 'Who wants to try these seeds?' and everyone looked at each other completely disinterestedly. At that moment I kinda wished I'd have produced a budgarigar as I'm sure it would have eaten them...

The weather continued getting worse throughout the day and we were virtual prisoners at the campsite from mid-afternoon onwards. We took this time to do some laundry and play some pool and table-tennis. Now usually I don't mind Jen beating me at the odd game of pool but she not only beat me at pool she went on to thrash me at t-t. And I was really trying. She stuffed me, spanked me, call it what you will...

With our dive trip planned for today we had a tough call to make but at 6.30 when we got up the weather hadn't improved any so we took a raincheck (ba-boom...) and decided to travel back to Auckland. This means tomorrow (when the weather is supposedly going to improve) we can visit Rangitoto Island which we wanted to do earlier but couldn't because of the weather...confused...so am I. The van we've had was singularly awful so we've swapped it and used the money we saved on diving to upgrade. It's much more spacious, although I couldn't work out why it wouldn't go above 80 (km/h) on the motorway...until I realised I'd left the handbrake on. One quick stop to wait for the brakes to cool down and the smell to dissipate and we were on our way...'much better' I thought, we hit 80 in no time...

So, tomorrow in Auckland before we head down to Waitomo for some black water rafting...this is basically caving on an inner tube in an underground river with no lights only glow-worms to guide you...should be fun.

One really good part about NZ has been the pubs - well the 2 we've been in anayway. In stark contrast to Aus where the pubs were nearly always awful...here they are bright, airy, and clean. There are also fewer seedy types (until we enter obviously) propping up the bars.